Nancy Wieler Fishman

Senior Program Officer

Nancy Fishman, MPH, is a senior program officer in the Research-Evaluation-Learning unit at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, working in the area of program evaluation, and a program officer for various research projects. She believes strongly in the power of good research and in the goal of “getting solid information out to inform health care programs that change people’s lives.”

Fishman also produces Scorecard, an annual report on RWJF’s organizational performance, which she describes as “the Foundation evaluating itself.” Data for Scorecard, which is presented to the Foundation’s trustees, management, and staff comes from surveys of grantees, staff, and key stakeholders in the field, as well as from administrative data.

Having joined the Foundation in 1997, she also serves as a program officer for other RWJF programs. One of these, the national Cash & Counseling program, gives older adults and people with disabilities greater choice and control over the care they receive. Another, the Wisdom at Work: Retaining Experienced Nurses program, explores what works in retaining experienced nurses in hospital settings. “One of the great things about working at the Foundation is that you get to see so much of what is going on in health care,” Fishman notes, “whether it’s long-term care, nursing, chronic disease or diversity in the health professions.”

She worked as a research specialist at the University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Public Health. During her time there, she was program director for a community outreach, education, and research project on cancer screening and a project coordinator at the Epidemiologic Data Center on a number of NIH-funded registries and clinical trials in the area of cardiovascular research. She recalls fondly her early career work as a visiting nurse and draws inspiration from her experiences in interacting directly with patients in need.

Fishman holds an MPH in epidemiology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a BS in nursing from the University of Connecticut.

She resides in Pennington, N.J., with her husband, Daniel, a high school math teacher, and their two children. She enjoys reading and music and is involved in volunteer work with music and theater on the high school level.